


Epilogue

by nanythemummy



Category: A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-27 06:37:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20755973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanythemummy/pseuds/nanythemummy
Summary: As they escape the Reign of Terror, the characters from Tale of Two Cities struggle to come to grips with the sacrifice that has saved all of them.





	Epilogue

**Lucie Manette**

...we were not being followed. I know that now. I feel guilty now, that my thoughts were only on escape.

I was repeatedly pleading Mr. Lorry to tell me if he could see any riders following us on the road to Calais. He must have been as frightened as I - more frightened than anyone, let alone a 78 year old man, should be. I felt like we had plucked the forbidden fruit and were desperately trying to hide from God himself.

Our peril stabbed through my thoughts to the exclusion of anything else. I did not think ofmy dear Miss Pross, or Jerry. I did not wonder why they were left behind or what they would face. I did not wonder at the reason my husband slumped across from me, and did not think of the terrible price that was paid to wipe Charles' history clean and return him to me. God alone knows the extent of my fear, and I ask forgiveness for it.

My heart stopped when the man at the way-station asked to kiss my child. When he looked at my husband I was convinced that he must know. If I gave him my little Lucie, he would surely snatch her from me and take her away, and we would all die beneath the blade.

I was frozen.

Mr. Lorry saved me with his level head, once again. He gently pulled Little Lucie from my arms and held her to the window so that she could be kissed by the monster perusing our papers. We pulled away from the station and I exhaled in a sob that did not end.

It was a cry for months of fear; a cry of ripping grief for the husband I almost lost.

**Little Lucie**

I stared at papa, slumped, mumbling in the seat beside Mr. Lorry. He was so peaceful. I was reminded of baby Charles, before he went to heaven.

What is happening to my family? Grandfather talks nonsense about shoes and I don't understand why. It scares me. I almost lost my father but I only feel bewilderment.

Is that a sin?

Mother is not my strong, gentle mother like she has been through this long winter. She seems confused and scared.

The man at the place where we replaced the horses wanted to kiss me because my father had been killed. It was not a kind kiss. I heard a man on the street say that that when the King had his head cut off, a man ran out and soaked a rag in his blood. It was a wicked kiss. He wanted my father to be dead like the King.

His kiss was not like Mr. Carton's kiss last night.

I wonder, if father is supposed to be him, where he is? I tell myself he will catch up later tonight with Miss Pross and Jerry. We will go to sleep on the boat tonight and We will all be together like father had never been in danger as if mother and I had never stood in the centre of a circle of dancing people covered in blood and singing; as if I had never seen a man pretend to cut off my mother's head with a saw.

I have nightmares about him, the wood cutting man with his saw.

I look at father and my heart knows that Mr. Carton is dead in his place.

Did I make this happen? I told him that I thought he would save papa and make mother happy again. Am I a murderer? Is it wrong to be glad to have papa back with us?

I think of Mr. Carton kissing mother's cheek and mine. He was saying goodbye to us.

He said something -I know I shouldn't have been listening, but I wanted to know what he was saying to mother when she couldn't hear him.

I heard him say "A life you love..."

I have started to cry and I bury my face in mama's skirt. My mother puts her hand upon my head and her hand, so tense all morning, relaxes as she pets my hair and I start to drift into sleep.

I repeat those words to myself under my breath like a prayer: "A life you love."

And I know that I will never dream of the woodcutter again.

**Doctor Manette**

I want my bench and my shoes! Are my jailers so cruel that they will take even those from me? I recall dimly:

golden hair.

A life with my beloved daughter and her husband.

Evenings beneath a plane tree in England.

Something about her husband... Doesn't matter. It was only delirium. How could it be otherwise?

105 North Tower.

My mind failing me. Where are my shoes? I need to feel the leather.

Something real!

Hands are touching me and again I glimpse golden hair. My daughter is sobbing. Her husband is dead. I killed my son-can't think that. It's not real. Only the tower is real.

Where are my shoes?

**Jarvis Lorry**

If I were a religious man, I would think that I had seen a spark of the divine ﬂicker across the pale face of Sydney Carton two nights ago, And I could think of today as the will of providence.

I cannot.

I am and always have been a man of business, watching the numbers, the pounds, the ephemeral lives that follow with them.

I am logical.

I am challenged and awed by the events of today.

So, what have I seen? I do not think it was a pure sacriﬁce of self. I did not know Sydney Carton as he truly was for more than a few days. No, only really for ten minutes, and I feel that I was one of very few to whom he dropped his facade. I realise that Lucie must have been one of the others.

Seeing that person in the last few days, growing in conﬁdence, I think he must have done it for himself.

Was it then a suicide?

I do not think it was that, either. Suicide must be borne of despair or self hatred coupled with a plea to be noticed. I think if it was purely that he would have done it long ago for it seems that the despair was always there. Perhaps he needed to be noticed. He did, after all, express to me his envy that I would be fondly remembered. I think he desperately wanted that, but he must have been intelligent enough to know that his sacriﬁce had the power to thrust his memory between Charles and Lucie. There could have then been only resentment.

I think that perhaps he never revealed his presence in Paris to Lucie for that reason.

Perhaps that was also why he encouraged the doctor to try to advocate for Charles even at the last.

Two nights ago, I saw a man who had been searching for a way to change; looking for absolution-had seen a glimmer of it and grabbed it at a terrible price, for a moment transforming into something beautiful and then vanishing.

The goodness of it was not in its selflessness. The man I saw, ghostlike in the ﬁrelight two nights ago was not Christlike but very much a fallible human. Its goodness was in its meticulous planning and foresight. A good but naive mind like that of my Charles, whom I respect very much, could never have done it. He would not have thought to do it. He would not have been desperate enough, nor had the foresight to try to mitigate its impact on Lucie and her father, or the ruthlessness to manipulate Solomon Pross into being party to the exchange.

That is what I hold in awe. It all happened in front of me and I wonder how I could have not noticed it?

I hope that in the end he found the absolution that he was looking for.

As we near the crossing, I feel as if an enormous burden has been lifted from me. Lucie no longer cries. No longer begs me to look behind. I no longer look behind us. I do not believe we are chased. The child sleeps peacefully, exhausted, grasping the skirts of her mother and Lucie stares ahead, her hand still upon the child's golden hair. Her eyes, an hour ago, lingered lovingly on her husband and must have caught a corner of paper peeking out of his coat pocket, jostled from it's place by his ﬁtful sleep.

In a boldness I've not often seen in her, she gently reached over and pulled it away. As she silently unfolded and read it, I saw confusion in her eyes.

She placed the letter gently within her husband's coat and now stares ahead expressionless, lost in thought or Memory.

I long to ask her what it was, and from whom, though I'm fairly sure I know.

It would be intrusive of me to ask, and even though I've lived with this family in Hell itself I cannot bring myself to ask. I instead ask her if she is troubled.

"Sydney Carton was in Paris."

"Yes. For several weeks."

"The letter recalled to me a confidence, a conversation from long ago. I can't say...Charles wrote the letter-but he can't have understood it. I...perhaps it would be a wrong to speak of it."

"That is your decision to make, Lucie."

"What is the time?"

"It is nearly eight."

"Five hours ago, then."

"Yes, I think so."

She slumps against the side of the carriage, half her face in her hand, looking stricken.

"I can weep no more, Jarvis. I want to...Heaven knows. I want to be joyful, and I want to grieve. Part of me thinks I could have done something years ago." She glanced down at her husband.

She said quietly "And some part of me is glad I did not."

"I barely knew him," she continued, faltering. "I should have tried. I wish I had."

"Lucie, he was changed in the last few days. Gave up the drink. He was ardent conﬁdent, determined and kind. I think he found the means to change himself. I think he was thankful for it."

"That knowledge shall soothe my heart more than you will ever know, and I thank you."

She looked at her child in her lap: The one peaceful face in the carriage.

She gently smiled, then and paused, thinking for a moment, gently carefully took the letter again from her husband's coat, unfolded it and read it again. Her eyes lingered thoughtfully for a moment and then she tucked it gently away in her clothing. She looked sadly at her husband and back at her father, her forehead wrinkled in concern, for his knees were to his breast and his face was in his hands and he was crying softly for his shoes. Charles hovering between wakefulness and delirium, trying to continue a conversation that had ended six hours ago.

She said, quietly:

"I dread that Charles will become like father, ruined by prison, and that I can never bring father back to sanity. Before, I was his reason to escape his prison...now he has returned to it out of grief for the shadow he has cast on Charles and I.

I do not know if I can ever bring us back together again as we were."

"After such events as these Lucie, few are ever given the chance."

"But what if I cannot seize it?"

"If anyone can overcome this, Lucie, you can. You are the golden thread which binds us all together."

**Author's Note:**

> I first posted this story on Fanfiction.net in 2011. It was born from a blog that was published years ago in which several Masters students read Tale of Two Cities and analysed it chapter by chapter. They ultimately concluded that the sacrifice which ends the book was inherently selfish, and an almost violent act in which Sydney Carton thrust himself between Charles and Lucie. I disagreed with this interpretation, and don't think a close reading of the book supports it. The question of how the characters, if they were real people, would cope with Carton's death tickled my imagination.  
The result is this story: one of the few things I've written that I still liked after I finished it-- Though I've admittedly written very little fanfic. After nearly eight years, I still like it.


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